Nigel Farage backs Simpson’s Tavern campaign railing against City becoming ‘corporatised and homogenised’
Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has thrown his weight behind the campaign to save the historic Simpson’s Tavern, as a crowdfunding campaign approached £80,000.
The former UKIP and Brexit Party leader, who worked in the city before entering politics, penned an op-ed this week blaming the ‘work from home culture’ as a contributing factor to the chophouse’s demise.
Simpson’s, which has sat off Cornhill since 1757 and become a City institution, was served with a winding up petition as a result of rent arrears accrued during the pandemic.
Its general manager Benjamin Duggan launched a fund-raising campaign in a bid to save the institution, which has now reached £79,500, which is 20 per cent of the required £350,000 target.
Writing in the Telegraph, Farage reminisces about his time working in the City, where the chophouse established in 1757 “immediately became one my favourite haunts.”
The Brexiteer lamented London having become “corporatised and homogenised” becoming “increasingly devoid of charm or character”, with the winding up order for Simpson’s being a case in point for the “devastating cultural loss” the capital has experienced of late.
He said the pandemic and “the work from home culture led to Simpson’s going into rent arrears” and despite the restaurant having been “very busy”, landlords Tudor Holdings, based in Bermuda, “don’t seem interested” in agreeing a payment plan.
Farage suggested the landlord would be “happy to sell the building to a developer” who would turn it into “another glass and steel monstrosity”.
While backing the campaign to raise £350,000, the anti-EU figure said in the longer term it may need more than the total, as well as new investors and ideas.
This comes after the management at Simpson’s Tavern started the process of forming an Executive, with a view to driving forward the listing of Simpsons as an Asset of Community Value in Canada.